‘I’m sure my time will come,’ Jules grinned, but she wasn’t sure she believed it. In a similar way to how she had been outnumbered by boys during her maths degree, she was revelling in being the only tall, slim, blonde analyst now at the bank. Her skin was yet to transform as she’d hoped – the House of Vesuvius, the angry red lumps, marched ever onwards – but her dermatologist, paid for with her first pay cheque, had told her to give it time and she was so good at her job, had been so good at her degree, that her skin was no longer the first thing people noticed about her. In fact, she realised, people had begun to know of her, eliciting an ‘Oh, you’re Julia Frey, I heard about your work on Project Hummingbird’ when they met. It reminded her of a line from Roald Dahl – something about being nice and it shining out of your face like sunbeams. That’s what excelling at work, at finally being taken seriously, was doing for her.

‘It’s in my blood anyway,’ she beamed. ‘My father’s always loved working. You know what he’s like.’ The girls had met Jules’s father, Douglas, at her twenty-first birthday earlier that year, a large catered marquee affair in her parents’ garden, Douglas holding court affably at the centre of it all. A few years ago, her father had received a lucrative offer to sell his accountancy firm and retired early.

She reached for her new work BlackBerry to check progress on Project Iguazu and gasped at the headline of a News Update email. She clicked on the link.

‘Have you seen this?’ Jules asked grimly, waving the screen of her BlackBerry in Nina’s direction, where a page from the Daily Mail was struggling to load… Samir Laurent Sex Pest Shame. Nina nodded, lips pursed. So that’s what’s up, Jules thought.

‘Samir Laurent has been accused of harassment by his co-star Mariella Ping. In a sign that executives are taking the matter seriously, he has been removed from the franchise and will be replaced in the current and all future films,’ she read. ‘My God, what did he do?’

Nina shrugged, the effort exhausting. Jules continued her commentary: ‘Nina, there’s a photo of you! With him at the Savoy… Oh, and another story underneath: “Samir Laurent reunites with long-lost daughter.”’ Nina knew instantly what that would be: a rival piece planted by her father’s PR in an attempt to neutralise the sting of the exposé. Suddenly, it made sense: Samir coming back into her life without warning, their infrequent meetings at high-profile places where they were always papped. She was nothing more than a back-up PR plan.

‘Oh my goodness!’ Alice exclaimed as Jules continued to read the article, a palm across her mouth. Her perfect mouth, which had spent the night with Teddy, Nina thought. Alice reached over the table and touched her cheek. Nina rested her face against Alice’s soft palm, felt the hard sun on her skin, closed her eyes to stop the tears that were building. She needed Alice and Jules more than she needed Teddy, she told herself. She loved them more than she loved him. Didn’t she?